The Order of the Centipede or Whatever Else Yeah
by Olhado
Summary: All Neville ever wanted was to be a nobody, actually.


Disclaimer: I do not own any of the below characters, even the ones you don't happen to want, like Wormtail. They belong to J.K. Rowling, who I love because she created Neville so I could do horrible things to him (NO, JUST KIDDING, REALLY!).

At the moment, this fic does not look like it's going to have a higher rating, than, say, PG-13 (for general violence and mayhem and maybe just a teensy little bit of gore). Right now, it's more like G. 

Oh yes, and it's about Neville. It's about other characters, too, mainly, at this point, Hermione, but this is not necessarily a Neville/Hermione shipping fic. I'm not quite sure _what_ it is yet.

It is also set in the Future. After everyone graduates with Hogwarts and starts doing, you know, other stuff. So this is all rampant speculation, most of it joking. It also assumes you've read all five Harry Potter books currently published.

Anyway. Thanks to Morwen for giving me the idea of writing a Neville fic (even if she regrets it). She doesn't want me to kill Neville for some reason, so if it starts looking like the fic's going in that direction, y'all feel free to give me a yell, okay? Thanks!

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Once, many years ago, there was a cat and a snake. Neville had seen them from a distance, but their identity was unmistakable. Cats looked like cats and snakes looked like snakes and there was no forgetting that. He'd been shorter at the time and he had sat on a log, his stubby legs swinging, his toes clipping the grass. The cat and the snake were at eye level, a long way off.

At first, he'd only seen the cat. The grass wasn't so high that the cat didn't tower over it. Its back was hunched and its eyes were fixed on some point. Every once in a while, its tail would lash violently. Then it shot its paw out and smacked something in the grass. Neville couldn't see what it was that first time, but the cat then leapt over it and renewed its crouch, same stare, same hunch of the back. The second time, Neville saw the snake. It rose, head and curve of neck, above the grass, a pale, almost white creature that looked eyeless. The cat batted it hard and it went down. The cat leapt across it yet again and waited, same crouch, same stare. Another moment, the snake rose, the cat batted, and it started all over again.

Neville watched in horrified fascination. It would go on forever, he was secretly certain, because the snake never touched the cat and the cat never seemed to hurt the snake, although it certainly looked like it was doing more. _The snake-killing cat_, Neville called it in his mind, although it wasn't that, and continued to watch until his Grand-mum dragged him away.

That was a long time ago. Neville was surprised he remembered.

The fact that he was remembering it now, when he was _supposed_ to be setting up the Self-Transfer DooHickey, was not surprising. Minds that travelled in straight lines with a remarkable lack of large gaps were for _other_ people.

"Neville!" Hermione yelled from the top of a nearby building. "What's the hold up?"

"Just a second!" Neville shouted back and started plugging the rest of the wires into the DooHickey.

Contraptions like the DooHickey were a new phenomenon -- like, the-last-couple-of-years kind of phenomenon. Wizards used to prefer not to touch machines if possible -- what was the use when you could get much _better_ stuff by waving a wand? -- but that was before Arthur Weasley became Minister of Magic. Minister Weasley was convinced that magic + Muggle science would create a Renaissance or at least a good surge in the economy. Neville didn't much care -- he wasn't too much better at wires than he was at magic, so any Renaissance of any sort was likely to go over his head.

Hermione, of course, was fantastic at it and was likely sitting on her perch wondering why Neville couldn't manage anything this _simple_ -- here-let-me-do-it. Chewing his lip in frustration, Neville hurredly stuck in the rest of the wires. Whether they were in the right place or not, he didn't know, but oh bother, let's get on with it already.

"Finished!" 

"Finally!" There was a whirring noise, made faint by height and distance, and then a flash, some point on the straight line between him and Hermione. The display on his DooHickey flickered on and immediately dissembled into static.

"Are you getting anything, Neville?" Hermione bellowed.

"Static! But it's something!" Neville might have tapped the screen if he was all that sure about the DooHickey's stability and general safety. "Do you think it means anything?"

"Are you sure you wired it correctly?"

"I don't know!"

"Bother. Can you send it back?"

"Lemme see." Neville's fingers hovered over the keypad hesistantly. There was certainly a button for "send," but if it _hadn't_ been wired right, who knew . . . "But what if--"

"Just do it!"

Neville closed his eyes and pushed the button.

Well, _a_ button.

"_Neville!_" came a screech and Neville opened his eyes and directed them toward Hermione's building.

There was a thick pillar of smoke rising from the roof and Hermione was silhouetted in flailing fury against it. Neville swallowed.

"What button did you _push_, you idiot?"

"I don't know!"

"You _DON'T KNOW --_" 

Neville clamped his hands over his ears and ran to hide under whatever awning came first.

He knew, as he sat panting between a trash can and the pillar of a hotel, that it was a terribly cowardly thing to run away in the middle of an experiment you had just botched, but some things you just didn't want to _face_ first thing in the afternoon and an angry Hermione was one of them.

He figured she might stomp around the roof for a while until she calmed down and leave him in relative peace for at least a half hour, but, instead, she Apparated practically on his toes, her brown hair singed and in disarray and her teeth gritted so hard he could hear them grinding.

"H-hi, H-hermione," Neville said with strained cheerfulness and a tautly sheepish little smile.

"Do you have _any_ idea," Hermione growled, leaning sharply down until her forehead was almost against his, "how much that's going to cost the Ministry?"

"N-no, but I bet you're gonna give me one or two, right?"

"Wrong." Hermione grabbed his shoulder and hauled him to his feet. "I'm going to let _them_ give you an idea or two because _we_ are going there_ right now_."

"Can't it wait?"

Hermione pointed her wand at his chest, eyes narrowed. "You Disapparate first and then I and if you _don't_ appear exactly in front of Mr. Weasley's door . . ."

"Right, right!" Neville chittered, saluting. He Disapparated as he usually did, squeezing his eyes firmly shut, and, when he Apparated in front of Weasley's door, was simply amazed at the miracle that he hadn't ended up in the Dursley's magnolia bushes again. (Never had been able to figure out how he got there the first time, let alone the thirty first.)

He glanced down the corridor and quickly considered making a run for it, but Hermione was already behind him and clearing her throat. If she had her wand pointing at his chest, her threat couldn't be any more explicit.

Neville swallowed and opened the door.

Arthur Weasley's feet were propped up on his desk and he was spinning the propellor of a toy plane, his face one big fascinated grin. "Oh, hello, Neville, Hermione! Wonderful, isn't it? Spintrivical motion!"

"Yes, Minister Weasley," Hermione said briskly, not to be distracted. Her hand was firmly on Neville's shoulder -- who was still swallowing. "We've come to report on the Doo-Hickey."

"Excellent, excellent," Weasley practically bounced, setting the plane on the giant weasel sculpture perching on the left end of his desk and leaning forward on his elbows. "How's it coming, then?"

"Neville destroyed another one, Minister Weasley," Hermione grated.

"Oh dear. Destroyed?"

"Yes, destroyed! Ash, really, we are speaking, Mr. Weasley, of ash!" Neville winced. The more excited Hermione got, her grip became exponentially more painful. " And we lost _another_ rat, yes, another one -- if this keeps going, we're going to have to resort to ########### to preserve the budget. Oh, what am I _saying_? How's the budget going to cover the loss of _all these machines to this man's incompetence?_"

Neville's mind escaped before the end of the second-to-last sentence and he was skipping, unbothered, in a pristine field of daisies.

"Oh really, Hermione, the treasury's at a surplus! What's the worry? Besides, the DooHickies aren't so much important as exceptionally hard to build, tricky to maintain, and near impossible to test, which is why we have you on _this_ job rather then, well, more important ones that somehow require less brain . . . "

"_SIR! _No offense meant or even _implied_, but the DooHickies could be _extremely important_. More so than the Rocket Wizard Transit, even. We are talking about _self transfer_. If we can get them to function, sir, the Penseive will be obselete, the justice system revised, experimental travel safeguarded, sensitivity and empathy problems completely circumvented -- _sir, this could change the world!_"

"Hermione, world-changing possibilities or not, there's absolutely no reason to take out your frustration on your team-mate. Accidents happen!"

"_Not fifteen times in a row!_"

The pristine field of daisies had ended in a wide and likewise pristine field of grass. Neville resumed skipping.

"You _are_ a fairly forceful presence, Miss Granger . . . have you considered the possibility that you might make Neville nervous?"

"All right, all _right_, Mr. Weasley, perhaps our differences are merely personality related. Perhaps I give Neville automatic ulcers and he slips and presses dangerous buttons. _Whatever_. Just get me another partner!"

"Who?" Mr. Weasley sighed. "I hate to say this, Hermione, but you have a reputation of being . . . rather hard to work with. Harry's off on some Auror mission again and Ron and Krum are doing . . . something I'm not at liberty to divulge. And no one else . . . " another sigh " . . . is willing to take Neville's spot."

"_Fine!_" Hermione snarled and squeezed Neville's shoulder so hard that the pristine grass field exploded in a hail of mortar and he blinked, miserably back in reality. "_Just peachy-keen, fine! _ But let me work _alone!_"

"Oh, H-hermione, you don't have to work alone. I'll . . . I'll do better!" Neville felt obligated to chirp.

Mr. Weasley beamed at him. "That's the spirit, Longbottom! See, Hermione, he'll do better. Just a little patience . . . "

"You can stop digging your nails through my shirt now," Neville whispered to Hermione's, whose face was a ghastly shade of livid and her lips clenched so tightly that angry lines were twitching in a vague oval around them.

"Ve-e-e-errrry welll, Minister Weasley," she said and the words seemed to be wiggling frantically through the pressed slit of her mouth, wanting to escape as badly as Neville did. "We will rebuild, we will reform, we will repeat this sequence again and again until either Longbottom gets it right or I get roasted by his latest explosion." She began tugging Neville out, but Mr. Weasley shook his head.

"Leave Neville with me for a moment. Take a nice long lunch break, Hermione."

Hermione finally released Neville, gave Mr. Weasley a dangerously unintentional scowl, and stalked out, muttering ferociously about being "pandered to."

Neville rubbed his shoulder -- sure he'd see plenty of nail-shaped bruises there when he changed his shirt -- and tried not to look at Mr. Weasley, who looked ready to launch into a lecture.

He was.

"Neville, I have to admit that your performance on this project has come as a shock to me. As I remember, you played a key role in the final defeat and demise of You-Know-Who, avenged your parents, recieved enough OWLs and NEWTs to be accepted as an Auror, and became an Ani-magus . . . and as soon as you leave Hogwarts . . . it's as if all that incredible achievement wasn't even there!"

Neville shrugged, scratching his earlobe.

"For goodness sakes', Neville, you're almost as marked by prophecy as Harry himself. You're extremely bright and talented! But, no matter what I tell Hermione, I can't keep you on much longer if you don't shape up."

"I'm sorry, sir. I don't mean to be a mess."

"I'm sure you don't . . . but Neville, what _happened?_"

Neville shrugged again. "I don't know. Nothing, I guess."

Mr. Weasley slumped against his chair in resignation. "Well, all right. I suppose you can go. Just _try._"

Neville nodded and backed carefully out of the office.

He didn't want to risk meeting Hermione, should she still be in the building, so he Disapparated himself and reappeared clumsily in an alley, on a pile of discarded Wizard Burgers and Fizzy Fries. "Not the Dursleys, at least," he reassured himself and, after a moment of concentration, was skittering down the side of the dumpster as a shrew.

For some reason, landing in trash always made him want to turn into a shrew.

He remembered (because although remembering was hard, it was easier than dealing with the current situation) Harry 'n' Co's concern when he'd chosen the shrew as his animal. After all, it did stink of Wormtail and, Neville hated being reminded, but it was hard to avoid, there was some superficial similarities between himself and the traitor. Superficial, mind you, because Neville was only a surface coward and Wormtail was a deep coward-to-the-core who'd betray anyone if it guaranteed he'd be able to even sleep in the Weasley's rat-cage another night . . . alive. Superficial, because both were somewhat soft-bodied, fluffy looking characters with baffled faces (although Neville had lost a withering amount of weight during his seventh year). Superficial because both hung out around wizards that had (initially, maybe only initially in Neville's case) were far more powerful and admired than they were.

But superficial! And Neville had chosen his shrew not as any kind of weak imitation. Obviously not. It was just, shrews could hide anywhere, and could eat their own body weight, like, fifty times over in one sitting without bloating like a marshmallow. There was something attractive about that. And, maybe, Neville had thought Harry was over-stating his whole "I am not Voldemort!" thing by transforming into a leopard. Very flashy and very useful in a combat situation, but could anyone mistake you for anything but Harry? (Especially when there were these giant black rings around your eyes that resembled glasses.) A garter snake, no matter how loathsome to a person who got a lot of angst mileage out of being a Parseltongue, would have been far more inconspicious . . . 

Neville kept forgetting that not everyone thought like he did. As far as he was concerned, might as well acknowledge your similiarities to whatever evil nasty thing you happened to be the spiritual cousin to and let it go. 

Of course, to be fair, Wormtail had never exactly _possessed_ Neville. He could see how that might make someone upset.

Neville resumed his own shape after eating half a Wizard Burger as a shrew and made further plans to avoid Hermione for the rest of the week . . . 

As things were going now, he'd probably have to suffer his scheduled quivering emotional breakdown on Friday if he didn't. Sigh.


End file.
